This is really well written. I absolutely love the line:

Their flock grew ever more numerous, collecting like claw marks on a cell door.

Or is there…?

No worries. It’s a mix of both. If the kids are watching TV, I’ll stream direct from the Xbox. If we’re playing a game like Forza, then they’ll be on the Xbox with their own accounts, and I’ll be using cloud gaming to join them.

Although they have their own accounts, they’re set up under Microsoft Family (or whatever Microsoft have branded it this week) to be in my family, but I don’t think that has any bearing on the setup.

I have a Game Pass Ultimate subscription and there’s only one Xbox in the household, and that has both theirs and my account on it. So they can be signed in and playing online on the Xbox, and have access to all the Game Pass games, and I can sign into cloud gaming on another device.

Since I’m the account holder for Game Pass, if I were playing on the Xbox, they wouldn’t be able to use cloud gaming, so the only way we get to play Game Pass multiplayer games (with one subscription) is if they’re on the Series X, and I’m on cloud.

Edit: one last thing - cloud gaming is pretty flawless for me (for the most part). Something like Rocket League is tricky because the unavoidable extra lag makes all the difference, but most games I’m interested in are unaffected. I have a decent network setup though (for the UK), with fibre to the premises, and multiple wireless access points all wired directly to the main router, so the whole house gets about 300Mbps down and 50Mbps up, with a decent ping. The Xbox is also wired directly to the router. Ensuring the WiFi is adequate wherever you’re playing is the biggest factor.

To be honest, I’m rarely gaming for long enough for it to be a problem. It’s come in ideal for when one of the kids is using the Xbox on the TV, and they want to play a game like Forza with me, so I’m generally lying on the sofa playing with the controller on my lap, where the weight’s not an issue. It’s not exactly a Switch mind you, but it’s far more preferable to the phone and Backbone combo I was using previously.

As a Brit, I have to agree. So many of the skits that have been shared over the years are terrible, and I have to wonder if it’s a cultural divide.

On the other hand, the weekend update where the guys swap jokes is some of the best comedy I’ve seen.

Yeah I get that, and that’ll be because of the long term financial benefits of enticing the companies there. But still…€13bn is a mad figure.

It sounds so bizarre that Ireland has been fighting in court to avoid having to receive €13bn from Apple.

My comment was satirical

Makes sense, thanks

This job sounds like it could be replaced by AI

Wait, there are 20,000 ISPs!?

Several

You can follow hashtags in Mastodon tbf

I never even realised they were owned by Sony. I’m sure I remember them saying they left Microsoft to have greater control internally. Seems mad to go for more of the same.

Did they try redeeming it up to 15 times?

Totally agree with this standpoint from an anecdotal perspective. I’ve played a bunch of indie games via Game Pass that I wouldn’t have given a second thought to if the only option was to buy outright. I’ve since bought a handful of them off the back of that, which is sales they would never have got.

However the price hike is too much for me when I consider how many other services I’m paying a subscription for. It was a toss-up between quitting Game Pass or Netflix, and in my house the value of the cost-per-hour of entertainment was massively in Netflix’s favour.

Nice one, cheers

That’s why we take no chances and mow them down with blue light vehicles.

Police car repeatedly rams escaped calf

Case 3 is one separate text string containing the words ‘Complete or Cancelled’ (hence the quotes).

This is exactly why, and as simple as it is, it’s brilliant passive marketing. It stealthily implants an association to Apple Intelligence into every product and article that mentions AI, and might even require the author to distinguish their meaning when they use the acronym. They’ve Sherlock’d AI.